Technical Field
The present invention provides a system that uses a relevance search system provided with an image recognition engine constructed on the server side via a network to visualize and present on a network terminal of a user links between image components that can be recognized by the image recognition engine and other elements associated with the image components by the relevance search system, and the depths of the links, and to allow a user to visually search for and detect target objects, and also relates to a system for analyzing interest of a user and transition of the interest through the process on the server side and collecting them as an interest graph for an individual user, or for a specific group of users, or for all users on the server side.
Description of the Related Art
As a typical conventional means for grasping interests of users, a method of sending questionnaires to users in writing or in an alternative way, asking about categories of special interests to users from among several selectable candidates, and further the degree of recognition or the like on specific products or services with a measure for staged evaluation, and collecting responses to utilize them for marketing activity has been used frequently. In recent years, various services utilizing the Internet have appeared which ask, as part of user registration at the start of contracts, users to enter categories or the like of special interests to the users, for example, thus being able to provide related products or services reflecting likes of individual users.
Further, some sites conducting sales of goods utilizing the Internet can provide products or services with higher matching accuracy for more diversifying users by, for example, additionally presenting recommended products or related services from the buying histories or the site browsing histories of users, or presenting similar product recommendations on terminals of users yet to buy, based on history information on what else other users buying the same product bought (Patent Literature 1).
Moreover, with expansion of social network services in recent years, users themselves enter their regions of interests, likes, and so on in their respective user profiles, or click the “Like” button to writing, photographs, moving images, or the like posted by other uses, so that positive feedback from the users is reflected on the site, and also a new attempt based on the like information has already been started (Patent Literature 2). Furthermore, a service for transmitting a short message within 140 characters on the Internet has presented an idea of effectively determining interests of users by utilizing the characteristics that a large number of interested users follow a specific sender or a specific topic, and classifying and analyzing the content of the main topic or theme.
As an example of determining interests of users, there is a device implementing an algorithm for estimating changing interests of users in real time from words spread between files browsed by the users. (Patent Literature 3).
Specifically, the device disclosed in Patent Literature 3 includes means for inputting words included in a plurality of files from the browsing history of a user as text for each file, means for dividing the text into word units, means for extracting a “spreading word” referred to by the user between the plurality of files browsed by the user, means for storing one or a plurality of “spreading words,” means for determining a given “degree of influence” from the frequency of appearance of the “spreading word(s)” in all the files, and a given iDF value representing the degree of appearance of the “spreading word(s)” in a specific file, and means for extracting a collection of words of interest to the user as user profile information in accordance with a “influence degree iDF value” as a function of the “degree of influence” and the iDF value.
Further, a device or the like that represents a content system by a graph system including the relationships between users and items, and allows users to easily and accurately search for content of interest depending on semantic information is disclosed (Patent Literature 4).
Specifically, the device or the like disclosed in Patent Literature 4 includes approximation degree measurement means for measuring the degree of approximation in interests between users by receiving the supply of interest ontology data representing interest ontology in which individual persons' interests are hierarchically class-structured and measuring the degree of approximation between the interest ontology supplied, user graph formation means for forming data of a user graph that allows recognition of a user community in which the degree of approximation between the interest ontology is within a predetermined range based on the results of measurement by the approximation degree measurement means, and user graph reconstruction means for reconstructing the relationships between users on a graph base by managing data on user graphs formed by the user graph formation means and imparting semantic information by taxonomy to edges connecting a plurality of users constituting nodes in a graph based on the data of the user graph.